Showing posts with label eric deggans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label eric deggans. Show all posts

Jun 30, 2013

Call Me John Edwards But I Think There Might Be 2 Americas.......


call me John Edwrds but I think there really might be 2 Americas..............


appearing in Yahoo News today..............


Trayvon Martin case: How Rachel Jeantel went from star witness to 'train wreck'



Christian Science Monitor
Nineteen-year-old Rachel Jeantel holds some of the most critical information about the Trayvon Martin murder case. Yet her delivery on the stand in Seminole County this week drew widespread criticism.
She was hard to understand, mumbled, acted impertinent, annoyed, rude, and came across, as one cable TV news host said, as a “train wreck.”
But the torrent of negative reaction across bar stools and Twitter became more telling than Ms. Jeantel’s simple testimony relating what she heard on the phone as she talked to Mr. Martin before the sound of a “thud” on wet grass and a disconnected line. Moments later, Martin, an unarmed black youth, was dead from a single bullet from a 9mm Kel-Tec pistol registered to George Zimmerman.
While some have rushed to defend Jeantel’s multi-lingual background, others leaned hard into her personally, letting fly on social media a swirl of epithets that roughly amounted to dismissal of her as “ghetto trash,” as one commenter said. That reaction has steered the trial into a new phase, reflecting, some commentators argue, more on America’s privileged classes, including blacks, than Jeantel’s trustworthiness as a star witness.
Reaction to Rachel Jeantel on the stand “has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and writing,” says George Ciccariello-Maher, a history and politics professor at Drexel University, in Philadelphia. “These are subtle things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being always suspect in their testimony. It’s the same old dynamics emerging in a very different guise.”
To be sure, in the scathing commentary about what some called her puzzling demeanor and alleged lack of education was lost her singular background and her youth: A black and Creole girl growing up in a segregated Miami community, she represented part of the problem of the case – an America so divided, that many can’t “code-switch,” or move between the gauzy racial, cultural, and socioeconomic divides that have become hardened with the nation’s first black president, and which have helped fuel political polarization.
“What so much of this really revealed was the gulf between middle-age, middle-class, mainstream codes of behavior and life among youth from poorer, nonwhite neighborhoods … they couldn’t have been further apart if Jeantel were born on the moon,” writes Eric Deggans in the Tampa Bay Times.
But that divide epitomizes the trial itself, Mr. Deggans argues: “As each side on this murder trial tries to prove the other person had tendencies toward prejudice and violence that may have sparked the fight, how will jurors [five white women and one Hispanic woman] judge the difference between edgy culture and outright dysfunction?”
Jeantel spent nearly seven hours on the stand over two days, relating some of the most riveting bits of information about the night Martin died, crucial to the case. While others have said they saw Martin beat Zimmerman, that came only after Jeantel said she heard a heavy-breathing man, allegedly Zimmerman, say to Martin, “What are you doing around here?” and after Martin told her that a “creepy-ass cracker” was following him.
The state alleges that Zimmerman profiled Trayvon, who was returning to his father’s home with a bag of Skittles candy, a can of iced tea, and $40 in his pocket.
The state says Zimmerman chased and confronted Martin, and then fired at Martin only after he realized he was losing the ensuing fight. Zimmerman says he fired in self-defense after Martin doubled back and attacked him, breaking his nose and bashing his head on the sidewalk.
The killing became a national story after Sanford police refused to charge Zimmerman with any crime, saying they had no evidence to counter his self-defense claim. Forty-four days later a Seminole County grand jury indicted Zimmerman on second degree murder charges. If convicted, Zimmerman, an aspiring police officer who served as a neighborhood watch captain, could spend the rest of his life in Florida state prison.
The big question hanging over the trial is whether it was an unarmed Martin who claimed his self-defense rights against an armed adult stranger following him in the dark, and whether Zimmerman waived his self-defense rights when he made the decision to pursue Trayvon after noting to a 911 dispatcher that “these [guys] always get away.”
Yet the potential for Jeantel’s testimony to illuminate that central question appeared to sink beneath a wave of commentary about aesthetics, as Christina Coleman summarizes in a Global Grind article called “Why Black People Understand Rachel Jeantel.”
“I … understand why white people wouldn’t like Rachel … But maybe the reason white people don’t understand Rachel Jeantel has something more to do with white privilege than what they could call Jeantel’s capricious nature,” she wrote.
But Ms. Coleman’s contention that jurors should accept that blacks and whites often live in different worlds rather than as equal members of a polyglot American society is a problematic explanation, writes J. Christian Adams on the Pajamas Media website.
“Coleman sounds like John C. Calhoun, the South’s leading defender of slavery and segregation,” he writes. “Calhoun believed that blacks and whites could never live together, and that after any emancipation they’d forever be ‘worlds apart.’”
copied from Yahoo News.............

“I have spent my life fighting for the kind of people I grew up with. For two decades, I stood with kids and families against big HMOs and big insurance companies. When I got to the Senate, I fought those same fights against the Washington lobbyists and for causes like the Patients' Bill of Rights. I stand here tonight ready to work with you and John [Kerry] to make America stronger. And we have much work to do, because the truth is, we still live in a country where there are two different Americas... [applause] one, for all of those people who have lived the American dream and don't have to worry, and another for most Americans, everybody else who struggle to make ends meet every single day. It doesn't have to be that way...

copied from Wiki......
here is the link to the page:

Jan 2, 2013

The Ronnie Republic Welcomes Al Jazeera

file under:  Food and Fabric Around The World

Chloelouise and The Ronnie Republic welcome Al Jazeera to the beautiful coat of many colors of the United States.

Yes...I love going to London and seeing all of the different news channels from around the world.....cl

My thing....bringing the world together with food.........cl

really.....the lady that sits next to me in my sewing class wears traditional Muslim clothing...the fabric is beautiful...and she is beautiful, too.  I love her....she is trying to find a pattern to make her traditional dress and fortunately there are plenty of directions on you-tube.

Food and fabric...that makes everyone human and interesting....it brings people together all around the world.  It's just everyday people...trying to get dressed and eat and take care of their children.

What is my favorite restaurant.....forever and always....DZ Aikens deli in San Diego.  Really, their food is soooooo fresh and high quality.

I hope Al Jazeera will have some space for food and fabric.......cl

“U.S. viewers have clearly demonstrated that they like the way Al Jazeera provides compelling, in-depth news to audiences across the world,” the Director General said. “Our commitment to the voice of the voiceless, bringing stories from under-reported regions across the world and putting the human being at the center of our news agenda is at the heart of what we do. Everyone at Al Jazeera takes great pride in the independence, impartiality, professionalism and courage of our journalism. I look forward to bringing these standards to our new American audiences and working with our new colleagues at Current.”



JANUARY 02, 2013

Al Jazeera to buy Al Gore's Current TV, build new U.S.-based cable newschannel




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current-tv-al-jazeera-lavejpg-c810c19b43adbd63.jpgFor years, I and other critics have argued that Al Jazeera, the newschannel founded and funded by the government of Qatar, has earned a prominent place in America's array of cable news outlets, thanks to their incisive coverage of the Arab Spring revolts and war in the Middle East.
But no one predicted the channel would earn its foothold through purchase of a floundering cable concern owned by a former vice president of the United States.
Al Jazeera announced today it has acquired Current TV, the liberal-focused cable channel funded and co-owned by onetime Vice President Al Gore. According to Forbes magazine, Current co-founder Joel Hyatt sent staffers a memo with the news earlier today, saying he had spent a week in Qatar observing Al Jazeera's operations. The magazine quoted a possible sale price at $400 million.
jazeera-current.jpgHyatt wrote:  " it became clear to us that Al Jazeera was founded with the same goals we had for Current: To give voice to those whose voices are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the important stories that no one else is telling. Al Jazeera, like Current, believes that facts and truth lead to a better understanding of the world around us."
Al Jazeera announced plans to scrap Current's programming -- which now includes weekday shows featuring former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm -- to create a new, U.S.-based channel.
olbermann-current-decoder-blog480-v2.jpgCurrent TV has struggled for visibility and focus since its founding in 2005, beginning as a home for liberal-oriented documentaries and morphing into a more left-leaning analysis and opinion channel than liberal channel MSNBC. Hiring former MSNBC star Keith Olbermann to lead a restructuring of the channel and relaunch of his show Countdown didn't fare well -- Olbermann was eventually fired amid growing friction with executives, countersuing the company.
Al Jazeera has experienced its own setbacks in the U.S. cable market, struggling to earn access to American households amid suspicion of its Middle East roots and Arab-centric programming. Today, Time Warner Cable dropped Current from its lineup, though Bright House Networks, which often shares programming with Time Warner, still has Current in its digital tier as I write this.
Al Jazeera expects to double its American staffing to 300 in staffing the new channel, which will be available in 40 million homes even after the Time Warner cancellation. Where this new channel will fit in the axis of right-leaning Fox News, liberal-oriented MSNBC and non-partisan CNN remains to be seen.
But anything to shake up the status quo in American cable news programming can't be all bad.
AL JAZEERA TO START NEW U.S.-BASED NEWS CHANNEL
Acquisition of Current TV Will Make Al Jazeera Channel Available in more than 40 million American Households
NEW YORK – (January 2, 2013) – Al Jazeera Media Network today announced that it will launch a new U.S.-based news channel that will provide both domestic news and international news for American audiences.
The Network has won numerous U.S. and international awards for its journalism and with more than 70 bureaus across the globe it has one of the largest bureau footprints and newsgathering forces of any news network in the world.
Al Jazeera Media Network also announced that it has acquired Current TV in the United States and that the new U.S.-based news channel will be available on Current’s distribution network when it is launched in 2013. There will be a transition from existing programming until the new Al Jazeera channel begins to air.
The new channel will be headquartered in New York City. In addition to the existing Al Jazeera news bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago, Al Jazeera will open additional bureaus in key locations across the United States. Al Jazeera’s expansion will double the network's U.S.-based staff to more than 300 employees.
unknown-7.jpegAl Jazeera Director General Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani said that the creation of the new U.S.-based news channel and the purchase of Current TV are historic developments in Al Jazeera's 16-year history. He said, “For many years, we understood that we could make a positive contribution to the news and information available in and about the United States and what we are announcing today will help us achieve that goal. By acquiring Current TV, Al Jazeera will significantly expand our existing distribution footprint in the U.S., as well as increase our newsgathering and reporting efforts in America. We look forward to working together with our new cable and satellite partners to serve our new audiences across the U.S.  I am both exceptionally pleased and very proud that we could take this very important step.”
Al Jazeera’s decision to create a U.S.-based news channel was based in part on the fact that Americans have already shown a great demand for its news and programs: Almost 40 percent of all online viewing of Al Jazeera English comes from the United States.
“U.S. viewers have clearly demonstrated that they like the way Al Jazeera provides compelling, in-depth news to audiences across the world,” the Director General said. “Our commitment to the voice of the voiceless, bringing stories from under-reported regions across the world and putting the human being at the center of our news agenda is at the heart of what we do. Everyone at Al Jazeera takes great pride in the independence, impartiality, professionalism and courage of our journalism. I look forward to bringing these standards to our new American audiences and working with our new colleagues at Current.”
The new U.S.-based news channel will be the latest addition to the Al Jazeera Media Network which consists of: Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera Arabic, Al Jazeera Documentary, Al Jazeera Balkans, Al Jazeera Sport, Al Jazeera Mubasher, Al Jazeera Mubasher Misr (Egypt Live), Al Jazeera Mobile, the English and Arabic Al Jazeera web sites Al Jazeera.net and Al Jazeera.com, and supported by the Al Jazeera Media Training and Development Center, the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, and the Al Jazeera Public Liberties and Human Rights Department. As part of the Network’s expansion it is also planning to launch Al Jazeera Turk for the Turkish-speaking region in 2013.
The Al Jazeera Media Network is one of the most-honored news organizations in the world. In 2012, it won some of the most prestigious awards in journalism including:
•     Franklin D Roosevelt Foundation - Four Freedoms Award for “Freedom of Expression and Speech”
•     Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize
•     Alfred I. duPont Award
•     Columbia University Journalism Award
•     George Polk Award for Television Documentary
•     Foreign Press Association Award for Best Environmental Story of the Year
•     Amnesty International Media Award
•     The George Foster Peabody Award
•     Scripps Howard Award for Television/Cable In-Depth Reporting
•     Royal Television Society Award – News Channel of the Year 2012

Al Jazeera has won a wide range of additional awards (http://www.aljazeera.com/pressoffice/2012/04/2012416161854868952.html) and has been nominated for several Emmy Awards including an International Digital Emmy Award nomination for its 2008 U.S. election coverage. Al Jazeera has recently won praise from a number of American leaders including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator John McCain.

To learn more about the acquisition of Current TV and how to find Al Jazeera programming on a cable provider, please visit www.aljazeera.com/america.

Join the online conversation by following @ajenglish on Twitter with the tag #AJEUS, and like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/aljazeera or watch us on www.youtube.com/aljazeeraenglish.


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